


lie down, lick the sorrow from your skin

by jetpacks



Category: Scott Pilgrim (Comics), Scott Pilgrim - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, also the graphic violence isnt SUPER graphic but i think it's worth noting?, happy is a stretch but ya, nothing worse than in the final fight in the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27941543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetpacks/pseuds/jetpacks
Summary: When a person sees someone they love die in front of them, life never really goes back to the way it was. It's like crumpling a piece of paper; once you do, it'll never be smooth again.Wallace hasn't been sleeping well since that night at the Chaos Theatre.
Relationships: Mobile/Wallace Wells, Scott Pilgrim & Wallace Wells
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	lie down, lick the sorrow from your skin

**Author's Note:**

> you know what they say: It's Not That Deep, But What If It Was
> 
> anyway!! finally finished this after having set it aside for seven months. thank you so much to nico (nicomrade on tumblr) for helping me with the characterization for mobile! KING of loving underappreciated characters.
> 
> also, i've made note of this in my profile, but it bears repeating: if it matters, sorry for not uploading anything for uh... 8 months. i've been working on a longfic and for a while i wasn't able to write for mental block reasons, but i might work on some prompts soon as well.

It’s easier to pierce through fabric and skin than he expected, the metal blade gliding in smoothly just beneath (oh  _ God)  _ Scott’s sternum and coming out rose-red and dripping on the other side. The heart-shaped jewel embedded in the sword’s pommel glimmers the same hue as it glares out on either side like an all-seeing eye, gaze thrown across the faceless inhabitants who seem to stare despite faces that flicker in and out of perception. Wallace stares in abject horror, first at the wound in Scott’s chest and the blood dripping from his mouth, then at his own hands, which are wrapped around the grip. He releases the sword as if it’s burning to the touch, which it may as well be, and Scott, blade still embedded in his body, stumbles backwards, a bewildered look in his eyes.

“What are you doing,” he says, as if it’s a statement; his affect is flat, and his voice is clotted with blood. 

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Wallace stammers out. The action is foreign on his tongue; it’s unlike him to be this… this… uncharismatic. How the hell else is he supposed to act, though? After a shaking inhalation, he adds, “I’m  _ sorry.” _

After a few more moments of dead-eyed staring, Scott wrenches the sword from his chest with shaking hands and drops it; it clatters to the floor, a sharp metallic sound echoing from where it lands. As if his body has finally made the realization that he’s been gored on his own sword, he crumples, lifeless, and follows it. 

Wallace can’t look at the exit wound, a grotesque, cavernous slit, for more than a couple seconds; he turns away and covers his mouth for fear of retching. When his stomach reluctantly settles and he pulls his hand away, he notes with an abrupt sinking feeling that there are streaks of blood on it, wet and glistening in the spotlight that throws shadows down violently onto the tiled floor. Led by some sort of intuition, his hand travels down to the front of his sweater, where there’s a narrow, conspicuously damp spot a couple inches long on his chest. 

The pain sets in, then, a crawling sensation as the wound sinks through his body toward his spine; with a wet cough, he folds in on himself and squeezes his eyes shut tight. He doesn’t want to die, he  _ can’t  _ die, he’s too young, but Scott was too young, too, and look at him now, bloody on the ground, not breathing-

When Wallace opens his eyes again, he’s met not with the linoleum tile flooring of the Chaos Theatre but instead with the ceiling of his bedroom. He exhales a shuddering sigh and closes his eyes again, but he knows within seconds that it’s futile; he’ll never get back to sleep after a dream like that. It’s the first he’s had in a while, but definitely one of the worst; he half expects his hands to still be sticky with blood. Opening his eyes again, he glances toward Mobile at his right- he’s still sleeping, as far as he can tell, curled slightly into a fetal position, and Wallace  _ could  _ wake him up and ask him to use his psychic soothing thing on him, but he’s a considerate young man, and, while he knows he wouldn’t mind all that much, he can’t bring himself to do it.

Instead, he slides out of bed as quietly as possible, drowsily shoving his feet into his pink (and somewhat ratty nowadays) slippers before sneaking out of the bedroom. One of the nice things about his new-ish place is that there’s actually some natural light, so Wallace doesn’t need to rely on muscle memory to get out of the room; the moonlight guides his way. He’s not exactly sure what he needs, but he’s not getting anything out of lying in bed, so he may as well head to the kitchen- he could make himself a drink, maybe, to help him sleep, or just rest against the chilly laminate of the countertops and see if that’ll calm him down. 

When he approaches the kitchen, though, something else catches his eye: the phone situated near the edge of the kitchen counter. It’s black and cordless, a sharp contrast to the one at his old place- why’s he comparing the two so much? It must be because Scott’s on his mind. Wallace lingers in the doorway for a moment, staring at it, then approaches, the bumpy, non-slip fabric of his slippers’ soles tap-tap-tapping against the wood floor, and picks up the handset. His head’s still a little fuzzy, but after a moment of thought, he recalls Scott and Ramona’s number. He dials, braille that he can’t decipher pressing shallow dimples into his thumb, but pauses a moment before pressing the call button. It’s the middle of the night- 3:43, to be precise, he notes as he glances toward the microwave’s digital clock- so any phone call would be less than welcome. Still…

Wallace leans forward against the counter, resting his elbows on it as he holds the handset to his ear. The intermittent buzz as the phone on the other end of the line rings is deafening in the relative silence of his home; it’s almost too loud in his ear, startling him a little every time it picks up again, but there’s nothing he can do about that, he supposes.

Scott’s voice is (predictably) groggy when he picks up the phone. Honestly, he’s a little surprised he answered in the first place; any rational person, having seen the time, would ignore the call and try to get back to sleep.  _ “Hello?” _ he asks, sounding like he’s stifling a yawn, and Wallace’s breath catches in his throat.

There’s an ache in his chest, dull rather than the sharpness of the wound he’d suffered in his dream, and almost pleasant. Scott’s  _ here,  _ he’s alive, and yeah, he knew that, but… it’s good to confirm it. He can’t talk at first; instead, he just sighs, and, while he may sound upset, he’s far from it.

After a few seconds, Scott says,  _ “...Um, I’m gonna hang up now.” _

“Wait,” Wallace says, panicking for a moment. “Don’t- don’t hang up.”

_ “Wallace…?” _ Scott’s voice is tinged with confusion, which is fair, because it’s not like Wallace has made a habit of calling him in the middle of the night.  _ “Why’re you calling me? I was in the middle of this awesome dream… I remember something about cheat codes.” _

Wallace huffs a breath of laughter; yeah, that sounds about right. How’s he gonna explain this one, though? Scott still doesn’t know how much that night at the Chaos Theatre messed him up. Honestly, he didn’t even know himself until he found himself flinching at the sound of knives being drawn from the knife block and being overcome with relief whenever he saw Scott in person- or, he supposes, whenever he heard his voice. The piercing guilt doesn’t help, either- after all, he’s the one who strong-armed him into fighting Gideon.

_ “Dude, you’re acting kinda shady,” _ Scott says.  _ “Are you sleepwalking or something? Or, like, having early onset dementia?” _

Wallace frowns. “What? No. I don’t have dementia. I just, uh.” He clears his throat, stalling until he can think of a good excuse- normally, he wouldn’t have a problem, but he’s still a mixture of frazzled and sleep-addled, so he really isn’t firing on all cylinders. Finally, he settles on: “Shit, I didn’t realize it was the middle of the night. I forgot all about time zones.”

_ “Time zones? Where  _ are _ you?” _

“London,” Wallace says simply, the lie beginning to sink into his tongue, spoken with increasing ease. “It’s almost ten here. Perfectly normal time for a phone call.”

_ “Uh, alright,” _ Scott says, not questioning it further; either he’s too tired or Wallace is just a good liar. Wallace prefers the second.  _ “You’re just lucky you didn’t wake Ramona up. ...No, wait, you did…” _

Well, shit- he probably should’ve taken that into account. He doesn’t mind waking Scott up too much- the guy sleeps too damn much anyway, or he  _ did-  _ but he actually really likes Ramona, and she needs her rest, probably. “Oh, sorry. Hi, Ramona.”

Voice muffled as he turns away from the phone, Scott says,  _ “Wallace says hi.”  _ Wallace can’t hear Ramona’s response, but a moment later, Scott redirects his attention back to him and says,  _ “She says hi back.” _

Wallace turns around, now leaning his back against the counter; the edge pushes uncomfortably into it, but he doesn’t particularly care. “Cool,” he says, and pauses for a moment before adding, “So.”

_ “...So?”  _ Scott asks, confusion in his tone again.

“I guess I just wanted to say hi.”

_ “You spent all that money for a long-distance phone call to say hi?”  _

“Guess so,” Wallace says, and laughs again, casting his eyes toward the floor. He didn’t expect it from a night like this, but he’s genuinely smiling a little- not  _ too  _ much, mind you; he’s still a bit fucked up from the dream, as anyone would be, but it’s still something.

Somewhat surprisingly, here’s a touch of fondness in Scott’s voice as he says,  _ “Well, uh… hi.”  _ After a moment:  _ “...Can I go back to sleep now, or...?” _

“Oh. Uh, yeah,” Wallace says. He’s reluctant to let the conversation go- the more proof he has that Scott isn’t bleeding out on the floor of the Chaos Theatre, the better- but, given that he’s never  _ actually  _ been to London (or anywhere in England), he doesn’t really have much to talk about. “You go back to your weird Legend of Zelda dream or whatever.”

_ “I never said it was Legend of Zelda!” _

“Well, was I wrong?”

_ “Uhh... no.” _

“I never am,” Wallace says with a snort.

_ “Uh-huh, whatever.”  _ There’s silence on the other end of the line for a couple moments before Scott continues,  _ “I’m gonna get going, then. Or… get staying, I guess. I’m not gonna move. It’s four in the morning.” _

“That it is,” Wallace says. “Goodnight, Scott.”

Scott yawns, then replies,  _ “Yeah. G’night, Wallace,”  _ and, with a shuffling noise, hangs up.

Wallace lingers there with the phone resting against his ear for a moment longer before turning to place it back in the cradle. It’s then that a wave of exhaustion hits him; it’s not that he wasn’t tired before, but it appears that his body and brain have caught up with the time, still verging on four in the morning, which… isn’t the ideal time to be up when he has to get ready for work in a few hours. He attempts to rub the sleep from his eyes- a futile endeavor- then pushes himself away from the counter and begins the short trek back to the bedroom. 

He’d made the best effort he could not to wake him, but, when Wallace arrives, Mobile’s sitting up in bed, reading a novella he'd picked out for him the last time he was at the bookstore. As he looks up, the shadows shift on his face, bathed in lamplight. "I didn't know when you'd be coming back," Mobile explains simply, without a greeting. 

Wallace runs a hand through his thick, dark hair and sighs. He's not in as bad a mood anymore, at least, but he's dead tired, and he slides into bed without much of a response. "Sorry for waking you up," he mumbles. He doesn’t bother trying to pass it off as something benign, a midnight (well, 4 a.m.) snack or something; despite having gotten reassurance that Scott is not, in fact, dead by his hand, he’s not certain he could fake it.

Had Wallace been in a better state, he's sure Mobile would have some dry wit to toss back (and don't get him wrong, he'd like that), but he knows better; it's one of the rare occasions where banter just isn't what he wants. As Wallace expected- he's very in tune with his needs- Mobile instead says, “No, don’t worry. I wanted to read a bit more anyway.” There’s an air of something unsaid in his voice, a quiet  _ you can talk to me about it if you want,  _ but Wallace, though grateful, shrugs it off. Maybe in the morning.

“Glad to be of service, then,” he says as he tugs the blankets up over himself. The thought of going back to sleep has him wary, but he’s not about to stay up and be exhausted the whole day at work in addition to being bored out of his skull, so, after a moment spent observing Mobile, still lit up by soft lamplight, he reluctantly closes his eyes and sighs. He almost makes a move to sling an arm over his face to block out the light that shines a dull red on the backs of his eyelids, but it disappears with a  _ click  _ before he can, and there’s a sort of soft shuffling noise as Mobile closes his book and sets it aside. Too tired- or perhaps just too lazy- to speak properly, Wallace hums a note of appreciation.

He doesn’t open his eyes when Mobile places a hand on his head, fingers sliding into his already disheveled hair; instead, he only smiles. It’s not a wide smile, perhaps not even a happy one, and he knows nobody can see it in the early-morning darkness, but it’s there, and Mobile is there, and most important of all,  _ Scott’s  _ there, safe and alive in his own bed with his girlfriend and his little tabby cat, so it’s okay. It’s fine. 

He repeats this to himself once, twice, again as his breathing slows, and, happy or not, the smile remains on his face until he falls asleep again. It’s not a heavy sleep, nor is it particularly refreshing, but there’s no swords, no blood on his hands; in fact, he doesn’t dream at all.


End file.
